Gravitational wave researchers respond

The LIGO and Virgo collaborations wish to give our perspective on what we see as inaccurate claims about the robustness and transparency of our research in a recent article by Michael Brooks (3 November, p 28).

We did contact Andrew Jackson's team both before and after the posting of their article on the event labelled “GW150914”, and had extensive email and in-person exchanges with them.

LIGO signal data are in fact available to all. The time series from all LIGO's signals are posted on the Gravitational Wave Open Science Center; also software and tutorial links are found there.

In our article in Physical Review Letters on GW150914, Figure 1 demonstrated the clear presence of a signal compatible with general relativity in LIGO data. Small correlations in “residuals” are not indicative of a lack of signal. A wealth of peer-reviewed papers cited in that article provide many answers to questions raised in your article. Those interested in how the “glitch” was removed from the data for event GW170817 can read our Science Summary for the paper on it.

We are preparing a paper for peer review that explains the approaches the LIGO/Virgo collaboration uses.

Science thrives on scepticism and a desire to understand deeply how a result has been obtained. We welcome efforts to further replicate and extend the work we have done in interpreting the gravitational-wave data, and are continually working to make our data and tools even more accessible. The Virgo and LIGO laboratory and collaboration leaders endorse this letter.